


Links

by Mistflyer1102



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-09 07:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3242036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistflyer1102/pseuds/Mistflyer1102
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q had never meant to disturb his long absent soulmate.</p><p>It's both a blessing and a curse that he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He didn’t notice it at first.

Q poured all of his mental and physical energy into keeping his branch afloat after Skyfall, and pandering to an absent soulmate who had made it clear where they stood years ago wasn’t at the top of the maintenance list (although to be honest, Q had actually forgotten about him not long after, tucking away hurt feelings before pushing forward; if the other person didn’t want anything to do with him, then that was his business). 007 had conveniently disappeared after returning from Scotland, and Q did not try to pursue him for equipment or anything else, not even when the investigation committee chair offered Q the chance to have Bond as a witness in order to lessen his punishment.

He only remembered the soulmate two months after Skyfall, when, after a night of drinking with a few branch members, he stretched out on the sofa alone in his flat with a final glass, staring listlessly at the white ceiling above as sleep continued to elude him.

_“Long day, then?”_

Q dropped the wineglass at the unexpected, genderless voice, barely registering the shattering as the glass made contact with the floor. He abruptly sat up and looked around, heart hammering as he searched for the speaker. “Who are you?” he demanded, fingers reaching for the personalized Walther he kept stored in the false bottom of his coffee table.

_“Not someone you can shoot, I don’t see you either. But apparently I can hear your thoughts blasting in my head, and frankly it’s annoying.”_

“Fuck…sorry about that, it’s been a trying few months, and my barriers must have dropped,” Q murmured, heart thudding in silent panic as he realized that it had to be his soulmate—he wouldn’t have a mental link with anyone else; each person had a mental link with their soulmate and this had served the Double-Os particularly well in the past—and he was intruding on the other’s life again, apparently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on your evening—”

_“You’re definitely alive?”_

Q stopped, frowning as he carefully processed the words again. “Yes…I am alive,” he said finally, moving to start picking up bits of glass from the floor. “Don’t understand why I wouldn’t be, unless there’s something I don’t know about yet,” he said quietly as he set each glass piece on the table.

Silence, and he wondered if he scared the other off again. Then: “ _Your voice disappeared six years ago, I thought you had died…”_

“Ah, no, I blocked my end of the connection,” Q said bluntly, aware that he would not know the other’s emotions since they had no relationship, platonic or otherwise. “Judging from your thoughts, you seemed, um, content with something and I didn’t want to interfere,” he said, gingerly stepping around the mess to look for paper towels. “But it’s been a stressful couple of weeks, so I must have dropped them. Sorry for bothering you.”

 _“I thought you were dead._ ”

“Then perhaps you mistook me for someone else that you thought was your soulmate, and, er, might actually be dead,” Q said, taking the paper towels back to the mess and began mopping it up. Fighting back the headache—even before he’d blocked himself, he hadn’t spoken much to the other person—he said, “I’ve been alive all these six years, just giving you privacy. Again, just give me a few moments to put it back up, and you can go back to what you were doing.”

More silence. Then: “ _Perhaps it’s best for both of us if you do that.”_

Q nodded, ignoring the slowly unraveling hurt and embarrassment in his chest. “Right, right, just give me a moment, it’s been a long day,” he muttered as he lay back on the couch, closing his eyes and focusing on constructing the mental barriers he’d learned to create years ago.

* * *

 

Across the city, Bond took a careful sip of his martini, listening as the general murmur of the other’s thoughts began to slowly disappear before vanishing altogether. He’d thought his soulmate had been Vesper, when the voice ceased close to her death. The shock from hearing the voice again after six years of silence caused him to accidentally spilled his first drink on himself and the countertop, the latter of which the barkeeper had wiped down while scowling. While he was now curious to the other’s identity, he dared not pursue the person, just in case the person wanted a more in-depth connection, and one he couldn't provide. He didn't want to accidentally put one more person in danger— _they did not ask to be connected to a Double-O._

He signaled the barkeeper over, deciding he wasn’t drunk enough to go home yet.


	2. Chapter 2

Barriers firmly in place yet again, Q did his best to return to work.

Still cross about his self-imposed no-alcohol rule, in order to lower his chances of messing up again so soon, he used repair work as a distraction to fill the hollowness in his chest—there was a distinct difference between  _assuming_  and  _knowing_  his soulmate didn’t want anything to do with him—and otherwise entertain himself until he dropped with exhaustion.  _Just to take my mind off of things, then I can move on with my life again; I’ve done it once, I can definitely do it again,_  Q thought, gritting his teeth as he felt familiar anger and frustration, something he had not felt for six years since he last cut the connection, welling in his chest. 

_Creeeaaaaak!_

He looked up from the mangled laptop interior to see James Bond, immaculately dressed despite his two-month absence, carefully walking into the underground lab as he scanned the nearby pieces of gutted equipment and the half-finished car partially hidden underneath a white sheet. Q frowned, momentarily surprised to see the agent—Mallory had yet to assign him any new missions, citing that the agent had yet to complete psych evals after Skyfall—in Q-Branch, given that Q knew it was his fault that Silva escaped. “Double-oh seven, is there something you wanted?” he asked, setting his tools down as the agent turned to him, reaching for an absent gun.

Bond stared at him for a moment, before shaking his head. “I need another favor, two actually,” he said, walking over as his blue eyes dropped to the laptop. His voice sounded rough with disuse, and Q could only imagine where the agent had been hiding before returning to MI6.

 _I really can’t, I’m about to receive the consequences of covering your arse over that last favor you asked of me._ “Oh? And those favors are?” Q asked wearily, careful to keep his voice neutral as he pulled his glasses off to clean the lenses. He figured it was Bond’s business if he still trusted Q or not, and did not pry into that line of thought.

“One, do not tell anyone that I’m here,” Bond said, resting his elbows on the workstation table, blue eyes meeting Q’s hazel as soon as Q slipped on his glasses again. “There is something I need to sort out before I officially return, which brings me to the second favor.”

“And that is?” Q asked, resisting the urge to check the clock; his new probationary supervisor would be arriving soon, and that it would be poor manners on his part to be late greeting the politician. Even if he desperately wanted to be late, just to spite the man.

Bond hesitated, and then plunged ahead. “I need your help to find my soulmate.”

Silence. Q stared at him, visibly remembering the agent’s profile— _SOULMATE STATUS: DECEASED—_ before he frowned. “Um, do you mean the final resting place, or something else?” he asked slowly, brow furrowing even more as he tried to remember if his childhood teachers or counselors had ever mentioned soulmate reassignment or something similar. Q didn’t even know if reassignment was possible, just that some people with dead soulmates found comfort with each other when a connection failed to mature after the standard one-month relationship development period.  _Oh God, I’m doomed to a lifetime of month-long relationships until I find someone who doesn’t mind that my soulmate is still alive but doesn’t want to know me. Fuck_.

Q resisted the urge to let his head smack the workstation in frustration.

Unaware of Q’s internal dilemma, Bond shook his head. “I lied when MI6 recruited me. I didn’t know who it was, nor do I want to,” he said quietly, blue eyes studying Q carefully. “If someone from M’s past can use her soulmate against her, then someone can use mine against me, assuming it's not my soulmate turning against me. I don’t want that liability,” he said bluntly, causing Q to frown at the word.

Q may have been only a newcomer when M’s husband died, but he still remembered that the teams had discovered that it was a carefully disguised murder instead of an accident. “And you don’t know where this person is?” Q asked, raising an eyebrow as he leaned back in his chair

“The soulmate lives here in London, that’s all I know,” Bond said, his jaw twitching as he maintained eye contact with Q.

Q briefly wondered if the agent was lying, to ferret out information about Q or someone else. He silently rubbed his temples to ease the oncoming headache, and then shook his head. “My suggestion, then, would be to maintain this lie that the person is dead, and then create mental barriers that you can lower or raise as the occasion calls for. Doctor Miller can help you with that,” he said before going back to his work.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I created barriers when my soulmate died. Plane accident. It’s bit of an empty void without your other half otherwise,” Q said without flinching, the half-lie easily sliding off his tongue as he glanced up at the agent. “It’s been six years, but I’m doing fine,” he said sticking as close to the truth as he dared. He looked up in time to see a momentary flicker of  _something_  in the blue eyes, but thought he imagined it when Bond looked down.

“Very well. Thank you for the suggestion.” With that, Bond left.

Q merely sighed before packing up his equipment.  _Time to deal with the politicians._

* * *

Bond couldn’t exactly recall the moment when he realized that his soulmate could be a liability.

Perhaps it was the moment he stood at M’s grave two days before and noticed that she had been buried next to her husband. As far as he knew, the assassin was never caught, but M had never fully recovered after her husband’s violent death even though she pretended otherwise. His own soulmate—still alive, apparently—kept to his or her word and didn’t contact Bond after the initial slip a week or so ago, but Bond hated the idea that there was someone out there who could use their connection against him, and he hadn’t done anything to win any favors with them as it was, so lying to Q had been a necessity in order to figure out how to get the drop on his soulmate first. Q had been unhelpful this time around, and it had taken all of Bond’s patience not to demand for another method.

For a moment, Vesper's betrayal lingered in his mind, reminding him that it could happen all over again but with his real soulmate instead-- _England could be at risk again because of this...this person._

_Although as a psychologist, Miller might have an idea on how to track a soulmate down._ _I’ll go tomorrow morning, then, see what he knows._


	3. Chapter 3

“So, did you hear that Bond  _finally_  returned to Six this morning?”

“Did he? I didn’t know that, he must have arrived when I was going over the day’s plans with the probationary supervisor. The politician’s complaining drowned out everything else going on in the branch this morning,” Q remarked, stealing a mouthful of Eve’s chicken tikki masala. “Thought my plans were ‘too complicated’, and forced me to revise them before sending double-oh four off to Burma,” he said, easily dodging Eve’s fork as he stretched out on the sofa. The two of them had crashed in his flat as they usually did on Friday nights since they’d first met at MI6 months ago. “So which poor soul announced Bond's presence to the rest of the building?” he asked despite having a pretty good idea whom.

“Miller, of all people. Bond scared the shit out of him by sitting in his desk chair and going through the file Miller had on him when Miller walked into the office this morning. I was down in Medical to help O’Reilly with something when I heard Miller curse Bond to hell and back before throwing him out, yelling at him about scheduling appointments,” Eve said, switching television channels.

“I thought Miller liked it when agents came to him willingly,” Q said, frowning as he peered at Eve.

“Yeah, well, when a double-oh who already hates you shows up in your office uninvited after being God-knows-where for two and a half months, what would  _you_  think?” Eve asked, raising an eyebrow.

Q had pretended that nothing was wrong when Bond showed up in his labs. “Oh, good point,” he murmured, making a mental note to send an anonymous apology to Miller later; it  _had_ been his idea. “Did Bond make an appointment, then, and for what?” he asked casually.

“Monday morning, supposedly for soulmate stuff. He told me this afternoon. Apparently, he lied on his form that his soulmate was dead and now he thinks that the soulmate is a liability to MI6. M is worried about a repeat of Silva,” Eve said, rolling her eyes as she took another bite. “I think he’s overreacting.”

“My career wouldn’t survive in that case,” Q muttered as he took another bite.

Eve suddenly grinned. “Could you imagine the two of you being soulmates? You’re both missing your other half, so it’s possible. I bet you’d either kill each other or take over the world by the end of the month,” she said, frowning when Q fell still, mouth turned down slightly. “What is it?”

“He told me that his soulmate lives in London. Mine doesn’t know where I live,” he pointed out as he pushed his food around with his fork. “And Bond and I don’t get along  _that_  well, he probably blames me for M’s death and we haven’t spoken since then.”

“You stuck your neck out for him,” Eve pointed out, scowling.

“And I would do that for any other agent if I had to. Besides, if it was Bond, you wouldn’t get to shoot him like you said you wanted to do once I found my soulmate,” Q said as they both heard a firm  _knock-knock_  on the door to the flat. “The paperwork would be a  _nightmare_ , and you would be complaining about it to me all night until you finished it,” he said, grinning as he rolled off the couch and set his plate on the coffee table. “I wouldn't worry about it if I were you,” he said as he walked to the door and opened it. “Yes, can I help—”

He never finished the sentence; a sharp movement before he could react, and his world collapsed into darkness.

* * *

“Welcome double-oh seven, please take a seat.”

Bond wordlessly moved to sit in the offered chair, unnerved at being in the psychologist’s office first thing on a Monday morning. He still smarted from Friday’s performance, when Miller went straight into a panic and subsequently threw him out of the office after discovering Bond perusing his files. Bond had vacated the scene around the time that Miller’s soulmate arrived, and went to bother Eve at lunch before heading down to the gyms.

“Well, I must admit that I’m still a little suspicious when you requested an appointment without external pressure from M, and on a Monday morning, but here we are,” Miller said carefully, pulling out a clipboard as though Friday had never happened. “I’m assuming that there’s a particular issue that you’d like to address since you sought me out this time?” he asked as he sat down, putting on the expression of mild interest and calm that usually irritated Bond.

“My soulmate,” Bond said, watching the psychologist carefully. “I want to find them before they strike at England through me. I thought they were dead, but apparently they were ignoring me for the past six years until they got drunk a few weeks ago and slipped up on their barriers. I suspect that they could be a liability because they can lower the barriers when I’m unprepared and I may accidentally reveal something. There’s no telling what they may do with information that only I can provide,” he said, watching as Miller slowly nodded in agreement despite the frown that crossed his features. “I hate not having control over that.”

“I see.” Miller hesitated, and then sighed. “Well, we may have to start with barriers of your own, so that you can even the playing field despite the low risks of a betrayal from the soulmate,” he said, setting the clipboard aside. “Soulmates are, as you know, individuals that complement each other. Your strengths are their weaknesses, and vice versa. That is why agents tend to perform well when they are in touch with their soulmates.”

“How do I find them, other than through communication?” Bond asked.

Miller sighed. “In your case? Through sheer, dumb luck,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “See, there’s the barriers to contend with, but it’s the  _relationship_  that creates the emotional connection that would allow to know  _where_ your soulmate was with time. For you, I think we’ll have to start with barriers, and then we'll coax your soulmate out to talk,” he said, standing up. “For this, I need you relaxed, so I’ll make a tea that does that—and you  _will_  drink it if you really want to go through with this,” he said when Bond made a face, and then disappeared into the next room.

Bond gritted his teeth, but closed his eyes regardless, slowly breathing to slow his heart rate down. He had a quiet mission in hand, one he could do on the side in between the ones from M, and in order to secure his personal and his country’s security, he had to focus. He used the soft  _ticks_  of the clock to measure out each breath.

 _“Hello?_ ”

Bond remained absolutely still despite the jolt in his heart: he’d been hoping for the drop in the barriers and now was his chance to find out more. “Hello,” he said quietly, carefully, hearing rather than seeing Miller come to a stop in the doorway. “What do you want now?” he asked, careful to keep a measure of irritation in his voice to fool the other into thinking that it was another surprise for him.

A soft sigh, Bond almost missed it.  _“I’m sorry to bother you, but I wouldn’t be talking to you if I had a choice. My friend and I, erm, we’re in a bit of a situation and she’s unconscious, so she can’t contact her soulmate for help. I told the others that you were dead, so they didn’t knock me out.”_

“What do you need me to do?” Hopefully the soulmate wouldn’t notice the easy compliance.

“ _Just call the number that I’m about to give you, and tell her that Alex needs help getting a friend out.”_

“What about you?” Bond casually asked as he opened his eyes and sharply gestured for a piece of paper, which Miller passed over quickly along with a pen.

Silence, and then, “ _I’m negotiating with them, I have more time since I’m more valuable than the friend.”_

Bond nodded. “All right, give me the number,” he said, taking the pen and writing each digit as ‘Alex’ spoke. He frowned when he felt the barrier unexpectedly reappear before the last two digits, and then shook his head. “I know this number,” he said, looking up at Miller’s puzzled expression. “It belongs to one of the Q-Branch staff, Heather Nelson to be exact,” he said, pushing the paper back to Miller. “The soulmate’s name is probably ‘Alex’, and he knows Heather,” he said, standing up and gathering his coat. “Which means he has access into MI6.”

“Imagine that,” Miller muttered under his breath. “Dare I ask where you are going?” he asked, frowning as he realized that Bond started to leave the office.

“To plug a leak in Q-Branch, Q will thank me for it once I take care of the mole on his staff and the canary that’s about to sing. ‘Alex’ said he was in negotiations with someone who has the advantage over him, which tells me he has something worth negotiating with. Heather is in the higher circle of Q’s staff, as she once kindly informed me,” Bond said, pulling his coat on. “She gave critical info to Alex, who is now telling someone else to get put of trouble. There,” he said before turning on his heel and leaving the office.

And he knew that Heather was upstairs, and most likely available for questioning.


	4. Chapter 4

Q didn’t dare complain aloud even though his back had started to hurt.

“NATO firewalls and networks are theoretically complex to the point where not one hacker could get into them alone, since they were created by several programmers from across the board of NATO participants,” Mr. White said, turning the page of the file he was reading as Q watched him pace the small dais in the empty office building already marked for demolition within the week. “You were the only programmer involved without a soulmate that I could find,” White said, pausing in front of Q. Q closed his eyes as Quantum’s leader studied him for a moment before the footsteps resumed. “I wonder why that is,” he said after a moment, pausing again as though daring Q to speak.

Q remained silent, hazel eyes opening to meet Mr. White’s own, fingers flexing against the keyboard. The cuffs around his wrists, the ones keeping him chained to the table in a standing position, clinked softly as he tried to flex his muscles.

“I can do this all day, Mr. Winfield. The question is how long can  _you_  stand before exhaustion becomes a factor?” White asked softly, a smile spreading across his features when Q didn’t speak. “Do let me know if you come up with an idea,” he said before he resumed his pacing.

Q looked back down at the screen, where he was supposed to be cracking into the NATO mainframe at Mr. White’s request with the theoretical promise of freedom at the end. Q had secured the freedom for Eve, who, as far as he knew, was still unconscious. Mr. White wasn’t even in a rush, said that Q could work at his own pace as long as the technician behind him remained there to ensure that Q stayed on task. A spoken word or misstep could cost Eve her life, and Q desperately wanted for her to escape. He hoped that his soulmate at least called Heather by now, and that MI6 was on the way. He closed his eyes, aware that it was now a waiting game, one that White was used to playing.

He just needed to stall and give MI6 time to arrive.

Very slowly, while always keeping an eye on Mr. White, he lowered his mental barriers and muttered under his breath, “Please tell me that you called that number I gave you, or at least have it on hand so I can give you the last two digits.”

His soulmate evidently had been waiting for him. “ _I didn’t call anyone, and I don’t have the number on hand either,”_  the other replied, and Q nearly groaned aloud at the response. He bowed his head, vaguely confused about why the punch to the heart hurt more than he thought it would.

“Do you truly hate me so much that you won’t help me get a friend of mine out?” he whispered, shoulders sagging as he fought back the urge to scream in frustration. “I don’t know what I did to you to deserve this. I shut you out so you could be happy with whomever, so I wasn’t the constant, niggling reminder in the back of your mind,” he said, suddenly aware of the technician behind him. He silently cursed Mr. White for the unexpected twist in the deal, and wished that he had a better relationship with his soulmate to attempt telepathic communication.

 _“Did your negotiations not work after all?_ ”

Q didn’t dare answer, painfully aware of the technician behind him. He knew he should put the barriers back up, so that his soulmate wouldn’t have to suffer the sharp backlash of a cut link. At the same time, he didn’t want to die alone. He started to lean forward, to press a few more keys now that he’d lost his only chance of getting Eve while keeping Six safe. His fingers slipped on the keys, and he bowed his head, trying to keep Mr. White from seeing that he’d truly won while bringing the anger, frustration and hurt under control; Eve should not have had to suffer for what was ultimately a personal quarrel between him and his soulmate.

A flicker of movement out the corner of his eye caused him to fall still. Very slowly, he checked to see that Mr. White still stood with his back to Q, studying something on a tablet before Q risked a glance up to the rafters. His heart sank further when he saw Bond— _how the fuck did he even know I was in trouble?—_ perched on one of the supports, cradling a sniper rifle. The agent’s face looked as though it was carved from stone as cold eyes studied Q, fingers resting near the trigger guard. Q could only imagine what the agent thought and saw, an MI6 executive caught in the act of blatant treason against the Crown, but didn’t say a word and returned instead to the screen as he realized that no matter  _what_  he did, a gun waited for him at the end.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured under his breath as he flattened his hands on the keyboard. “The snap of the connection, when I die, will hurt, but I’m told that if you raise your barriers, you won’t feel the void,” he whispered, heart pounding as he debated whether to provoke either Bond or Mr. White into doing something. “I’m sorry, I’m trapped and there’s no way to get out of it. It’s either a terrorist or a colleague about to gun me down…and I hate that I know that the colleague is doing it out of fear of treason against the Crown."

Complete silence. Then: “How _the hell do you know so much about death?”_

“A friend of mine from university, her soulmate died in a plane accident six years ago while vacationing in the States. The friend said that the snap is like a rubber band against your skin, but with more force against the brain. The resulting void is this vast thing of nothingness that she found frightening after a while,” Q said, mouth twitching as he remembered taking the story as his own when Bond inquired after his own soulmate. “So it’s easier to just block it all out.” He felt guilty for speaking, but couldn’t stand the silence when he was about to die.

“I’m sorry, Eve, I tried,” he whispered to the screen, bowing his head and scrunching into himself for a false modicum of privacy.

“Sir!”

Q’s head snapped up as a uniformed guard entered the room, bleeding profusely from the shoulder. “Sir, MI6 agents have arrived, they just took the woman from her cell and there are agents still prowling around the perimeter,” he gasped out, leaning against Mr. White’s table and struggling to catch his breath. “Forget a fight, it’s turning into a rout.”

Mr. White stared at him for a few moments before rounding on Q, who could almost see the wheels working in his mind. Q suspected that it was likely that Mr. White hadn’t realized quite how valuable Q was to MI6, and had lost a prime ransoming opportunity among others. Q remained staring at him, determined not to give away Bond’s position even as White raised his gun towards Q, at least sparing him the interrogation before death.

He just hoped that Bond would at least do him the saving grace of killing Mr. White after he died.

* * *

_No…there’s no way in hell it can be him._

Bond didn’t think, just adjusted his aim and pressed the trigger right as Mr. White fired.


	5. Chapter 5

_Final count: three casualties of two dead and one injury, with many missing._

He closed his eyes, momentarily unable to deal with the reports scattered in front of his desk; headaches came more frequently for him in the last few days, and there was so much he could handle before he wanted to leave. The cut-off scream from the botched mission still echoed in his ears, promising to haunt him until he could shut it away. He leaned back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose when he heard his door creak. “May I please come in?” a calm voice asked, and he barely suppressed the urge to flinch.

Q looked up to see Bond standing in the doorway, the agent carefully balancing two wrapped packages and a steaming mug of what smelled suspiciously like Earl Grey. “Can I help you with something, double-oh seven?” he asked, readjusting his sling to better fit on his lap as he watched Bond carefully set both packages down and the mug in front of him before sitting down across from him. “What are these?” he asked warily.

“Apologies. The small one is for Heather, the other one and the tea are for you,” Bond said, eyeing the mug as Q awkwardly tried to reach for it with his left hand, and then leaned forward to push the mug closer to Q. He nodded to the sling and said, “How long will you be needing that?”

“Six to twelve weeks. O’Reilly said I was fortunate to have loose enough chains to pull back and get hit in the collarbone instead of the head,” Q said, swallowing down a wave of nausea at the memory. He still remembered the spray of blood erupting from Mr. White’s head as Bond shot him, the scream that ripped from his own throat seconds before he collapsed from pain and nausea. “How did you know where to find me?” he asked, looking up to find Bond watching him with a pensive expression.

“I asked Heather, as I was instructed,” Bond said, Q pausing with his mug halfway to his lips. “A little bit of questioning, and I followed the trail that you and Eve left behind in your flat. Narrowing it down to Vienna was a little difficult, but I remembered Mr. White’s affinity for opera and the little ‘Q’ for Quantum pins he and his cronies had that one time,” Bond said, pulling out a small evidence bag and tossing it across the desk. “The pin was on the floor underneath a mess of chicken tikki masala near the coffee table.”

“Is that why there was the smell of cleaners all over my flat when I finally got to go home?” Q asked tiredly, studying the small, metal ‘Q’ in the bag. He wondered when he could politely kick Bond out of his office; his barriers, when he finally woke up in Medical, were still down, but the soulmate had been strangely quiet since the confrontation with Mr. White. He needed to fix the barriers before the soulmate got a bit too much in the way of classified information.

“Yes. Alec and I split up, he went after Eve and I went after you. Theirs is a more…defined connection in comparison, and I found you after he found her.” He hesitated, and then said carefully, “I had thought you committed treason for about five seconds, until I saw that you were speaking.”

“…Who instructed you to speak to Heather?” Q asked slowly, feeling cold as he looked up at Bond, who shrugged with one shoulder. “That…that wasn’t in any of the reports. Even yours.”

“I thought you wouldn’t want to publicize that information, given how we both feel towards our soulmates,” Bond said, his face betraying nothing. “My soulmate instructed me to call Heather, and I suspect you told yours to call her. I only realized it could be you when I saw that you spoke to your soulmate back in Vienna, and I could hear you at the same time. I decided to take a chance with that shot.”

“But I can’t hear you right now!” Q nearly shouted, standing up without thinking even as he recalled Bond’s timeline from his files; Vesper had died six years ago, around the time that Q shut him out. He looked away at Bond, hurt that Bond would even  _dare_  presume such a thing—had he broken into Q’s files and read the truth of Q’s soulmate?—and the sting when he realized that if Bond told the truth, then the agent wanted nothing to do with him.  _And he still suspected that I committed treason, if he took a chance with that shot._

“What do you want from me, double-oh seven?” he demanded, trying to remain professional despite the anger and twist in his heart when he realized that if it was Bond, the agent was cursed now to be with the individual who condemned M, the only other person Bond relied on (whether he denied it or not) as family.  _No, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to hear._  “Get out,” he said before Bond could speak. “Get out of my office, double-oh seven, and don’t fucking come back.”

To his shock, Bond nodded. “Understood, Quartermaster,” he said, smoothly standing up and leaving the office, careful not to shut the door.

Q slammed his good fist down on the desk without thinking, fighting back tears of anger and guilt as he tried to build his armor—both soulmate and mental—back up to hide indefinitely again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for posting this one later than usual, it was a bit hectic today.


	6. Chapter 6

_He’s lying. He broke into my records to use that information against me._

Q adjusted his sling before gathering his belongings and left his office, using his hip to push the door closed. The branch was quiet for save for the skeleton crew, and both 003 and 007, who were out on separate missions. He hadn’t seen Bond in the branch at any point in the last three weeks, the agent having timed his last departure to just after Q’s shift ended, leaving R to handle the equipment transfer. Quietly brushing off tentative offers of assistance with a shake of his head, he walked out of the branch and slowly made his way to the main entrance, intending to call a cab since he couldn’t bear the thought of riding the Tube with a sling.

He dropped his bag, halfway down the front steps of the building. The grip slid out of numb fingers and he instinctively reached with his other hand to catch it, a stab of pain shooting across his shoulder and across the collarbone.  _“Fuck_ ,” he swore underneath his breath as he recoiled, taking a few steps back as he examined the overturned bag. “Fuck, fuck,  _fuck_ ,” he whispered as he tried not to think of the delicate equipment inside, nudging it with a foot in an attempt to get the handle closer to him.

“Do you need help?”

He froze at the familiar voice and looked up sharply to find Bond, dressed in his usual suit underneath a dark overcoat, watching him as he stood by the driver’s door of the familiar Aston Martin. “Double-oh seven…when the hell did you get here?” he asked, numbly recalling the screen that had told him that Bond was in Greece.

“This morning, R said I was being recalled due to an unsatisfactory psych evaluation. I left the tracker with the target to give my replacement a place to resume the chase,” Bond said, nodding to the car. “I was just leaving after having a conversation with M, do you want me to drop you off at your flat?” he asked, arching an eyebrow when Q frowned.

Q almost refused—he didn’t need the agent to know the building where he lived—but at the same time, he would be able to save cab money. “Only if you drop me off at the front door,” he said, awkwardly starting to kneel to pick up his bag. He heard a few steps before Bond knelt into his vision and picked up the bag before Q could reach it. “Let me have it, it has delicate components,” he lied, not willing to risk giving the agent an excuse to see him again because he forgot the bag in the boot of the car.

The agent handed it over without further question and left to open the passenger door for Q. He closed it and let Q get settled as he walked around and slid into the driver’s seat, turning the car on and smoothly pulling away from the curb. Q almost reminded the agent to stick to the speed limit, but Bond did without prompting, only glancing at Q once for the address. Otherwise, the two of them settled in what Q felt was an awkward silence—he could not forget that Bond had suspected him of treason nor his words about soulmates—but Bond did not say anything about it either, instead focused on the road ahead of him.

“How are you feeling?”

Q blinked at Bond’s attempt at a conversation, but rather than nitpick, as he was sorely tempted to do, he swallowed back his initial comment. “Irritable,” he said, blinking before he shrugged his own remark off. “It’s been a long week,” he added after a moment to soothe the sting.

“Mm, I see. I’m not exactly finished with the week either, there’s still something left that I have to deal with before I’m permitted back on the field,” Bond said, crossing the bridge towards Q’s flat near Hyde Park. “Miller wasn’t exactly enthusiastic when he found out that M allowed for me to leave. Hence the recall,” he said, glancing at Q once.

Soulmate business, Q could think of no other reason Bond would willingly be with Miller, especially given how their last meeting went in his office. “I—about that night a few weeks ago, when I threw you out of my office…” Q began, feeling at loss for words.

“I was out of line, with the treason comment. You weren’t resisting Mr. White, from what I could tell, and it was difficult to see the chains from where I was. I thought you were complying with his requests as one would with a teammate,” Bond said in a controlled voice, staring determinedly ahead.

“The only reason I was out there was because I told him that my soulmate was dead. He didn’t think I had any reason to lie, and did not perceive me as a threat because I tried to present myself as valuable, but harmless. I was trying to stall, I thought my soulmate could call the bloody number and get MI6 out to help me,” Q explained softly, brow furrowed as he remembered those few terror-filled minutes.

“So your soulmate is alive, then?” Bond asked carefully, glancing at Q when they stopped at a light.

Q sighed. “It’s complicated,” he said, stubbornly looking out the window.

Bond remained silent.

Soon he pulled up to Q’s building, the car idling on the curb as Q unbuckled himself and opened the door. As he was getting out of the car, Bond suddenly said, “I thought Vesper was my soulmate, I stopped hearing a voice after she died. A few months after Skyfall, I heard the voice again, but it was gone before I could fully process what the hell had just happened. It was very disconcerting.” Q turned to stare at the agent, but Bond ignored him, staring straight ahead. “My first reaction was that it was best we remained blocked from each other, as we agreed in those five minutes, they hadn’t asked for a double-oh to be their soulmate. Then I realized that if Vesper could betray England, then so could they, especially since they now had a route into MI6. I meant to track them down before that could happen, but Miller says it’s difficult to do as much without a solid connection. I’ve been learning barriers since then, at his insistence,” he said, turning to Q, who remained still. “The soulmate then gave me a number to summon help with, and I assumed that your branch had a leak. Which brings us to Vienna.” He shook his head and said, “I will see you again at some point, I imagine. Good evening.”

“Good evening,” Q murmured, feeling cold and numb as he stepped away from the car, allowing it to pull away. He watched as it slipped back into traffic, and held his bag close as he turned to head back into the flat.

_How else would he know that that was my story unless I either told him, Eve did, which I doubt, or he experienced it for himself?_

Q sighed, closing his eyes as he tried to decide his next course of action. Then he set his bag down before reaching into a pocket for his mobile. ‘ _Do you want to come up for coffee and to talk?’_  he typed, making a face at the pathetic little message and hitting ‘Send’ before he could change his mind.

He estimated that he stood there for five minutes before he heard the familiar engine returning.


	7. Chapter 7

“Here, take a seat…do you want tea or coffee?”

“Neither, I don’t want to disturb you for very long,” Bond said carefully, and Q could feel the agent’s eyes following him as he walked into the kitchenette to get his tea. It took all of Q’s effort not to turn around and demand where Bond got the information about his soulmate history… _unless he’s not making it up._  Even Eve hadn’t known the extent of it after Q made first contact with his soulmate in six years. He turned his focus back to the tea, left hand shaking with the kettle as he kept his right tucked against against his body in an effort to resist using the arm in the sling. He stepped sharply back when the water splashed out of the mug and onto the counter, gritting his teeth until he sensed someone behind him. Before he could ask, Bond gently reached forward and braced Q against his body, reaching around Q to cover Q's left hand with his right to help to steady the kettle so he could finish pouring the hot water into the mug without spilling it. “If you don’t want to talk now, you don’t have to.”

“No, no, no… you’re already here, might as well,” Q said, fumbling for his mug before he finally held it out at a distance, still clutching it in his left hand. Bond, mercifully, moved away back towards the living room, where he sat back down on the edge of the armchair. Q gingerly sat down on the sofa to slowly sip his tea, wondering how to even approach the topic of soulmates when his own had been silent for so long, and he didn’t want to make the wrong assumption; Bond had evidently already experienced one round of errors, and Q hated the thought of hurting him further. “Last chance to escape,” he said after a moment, looking up at Bond as he set the tea mug down on the side table.

Bond silently gestured to him. “I have nowhere I have to be, I was about to head home after dropping you off,” he said quietly, blue eyes carefully examining him.

Q nodded, wondering why it was so bloody hard to talk to the agent all of a sudden. He looked down at his hands and studied the sling, trying not to think of previous events. He swallowed before he said, “Bond, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression or make another mistake only because I don’t know who my soulmate is,” he said bluntly, looking up to face the agent.  “It’s easier for me to pretend that my soulmate is dead because we haven’t spoken for six years and made a mutual agreement never to talk. My barriers slipped only because I was worn out from Skyfall, and I thought my soulmate was happier without me.”

Bond studied him for a moment, frowning slightly. He evidently chose not to pursue that line of thinking, leaning back in his chair. “Miller seems to have found a way to test whether we were soulmates or not, especially since our stories match,” he said instead after a moment, catching Q by surprise. “Essentially, you and I repeat what happened in Vienna, where one of us says something that the other cannot hear.”

Q nodded mutely, watching as Bond stood up and pulled out a pair of earmuffs. “I’m going to move across the room now, and going to whisper. Watch my lips, and see if the words corresponds with what you hear,” he said, pulling out his scarf. I’m going to wrap this around your head to further muffle my words.”

Q nodded, awkwardly reaching up to steady his glasses with a hand as Bond wrapped the scarf around his head, placing the earmuffs down over the scarf. He could hear his heart thudding as he watched Bond walk across the room— _do I really want to be soulmates with him? What will it mean, then, if we are? He probably doesn’t want romantic commitment, which will probably always belong to Vesper. But I don’t know if I can keep him blocked out forever, even if we are friends, he likes his privacy—_

“Q?”

He looked up to see Bond waiting expectantly. “Are you ready?” the agent prompted a second later.

Q nodded, mouth suddenly dry.

Bond sat down, and then Q abruptly heard “ _Nod if you can hear me”_  in his mind as he watched the agent’s lips move around the order, the sudden presence of another in the back of his head causing him to blink several times before he nodded obediently. He could only stare in shock as Bond slowly stood up and returned to his side, gently pulling the earmuffs off and unwinding the scarf. “The reason I did not call anyone, when you ordered me to, was because I went upstairs directly to talk to Heather. I did not have the phone number on me because I didn’t need it,” Bond said quietly, his presence still  _there_  in the back of Q’s mind. He glanced at the clock Q knew hung in the kitchen, and then said, “I’ll leave you now, to rest.”

“Why did you shut me out after Vienna?” Q blurted out, his voice cracking as the agent turned away from him.

“To give you a chance to heal in privacy, I didn’t want you to panic,” Bond said, turning back around to face him. “I can easily back off again, and we can move at your pace. Miller mentioned that he would like to work with the two of us at some point, mostly because of me.”

“Did he know?”

“No, he wanted to work with me and my partner once I figured out who it was,” Bond said, gathering his coat. “I’ll leave you now.”

“Bond…did you ever want me?” Q asked after a moment, horrified at himself a moment later when he realized his words. “You know what?” he said, starting to stand up to awkwardly shoo Bond out the door when the agent paused and turned to face him again. “You don’t have to answer that, I—”

“There were times that I would have appreciated having you there, to ease the loneliness or the pain,” Bond interrupted, catching his hands and holding him in place, only letting go of his right when he squeaked at the tug of still-healing skin on his shoulder. “But you weren’t MI6 then, I checked your records not long after Skyfall, so I realized that it was perhaps for the better that you didn’t,” he said quietly, wrapping Q’s hands in his own. “I…” he hesitated, and then said, “I would like to strengthen our connection, if you want, and perhaps keep it our little secret for now. Unless you want to publicize it in our records?”

“No…no, it might be harder for someone to use us against each other,” Q agreed, momentarily surprised when Bond pulled him closer into an embrace, holding him even when he started to shake again. He only relaxed when he realized that Bond hugged mostly his left side, leaving him space on his right and away from the sling. “So…so you’re not horrified it’s me? As your soulmate?”

“On the contrary, I can’t wait to see M’s face when we tell him. We could be a formidable team, if we put our minds to it,” Bond said, grinning when Q looked up at him. Then he gently kissed the back of Q’s left hand, and Q swallowed, ignoring the burn in his cheeks as the agent stepped back. “I’ll see you in the morning, then. Do let me know, if possible, when I’m permitted back in your office.”

Q nodded, fully unaware that he was smiling until long after the agent left his flat and he caught his reflection in the living room window.

When he sensed that the barriers were still down, and he could feel Bond’s presence in the back of his mind, he suspected that despite future bumps in the road, the two of them would be all right. “Oh God, Mallory is going to have an aneurism over this,” he muttered to himself, mouth twitching when he heard Bond’s soft laugh in response. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! I hope you all enjoyed this little story! :)
> 
> Mistflyer


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